Recent years have been years of vacillation and disorganization for the RSDLP. For three years the party was unable to convene either a conference or a congress, and for the last two years the Central Committee could not unfold any activity. The party, it is true, continued to exist, but in the form of separate groups in all more or less significant cities—groups which, in the absence of a Central Committee, each lived a somewhat isolated existence of its own.

Of late, under the influence of a new awakening of the Russian proletariat, the party began to gain strength again, and quite recently we finally obtained the possibility of convening a conference (which was impossible throughout the entire period since 1908), at which were represented the organizations of both capital cities, the Northwest and the South, the Caucasus and the Central Industrial region. In all, twenty organizations established close ties with the Organizational Commission which convened this conference, that is, almost all the organizations, both Menshevik and Bolshevik, existing at the present moment in Russia.

During its twenty-three sessions, the conference, which recognized for itself the rights and obligations of the highest party organ, discussed all questions on the agenda, among which were a number of extremely important ones. Thus, the conference gave a profound and highly comprehensive assessment of the contemporary political situation and of the party's policy, an assessment which is in full correspondence with the resolutions of the 1908 conference and the decisions of the Central Committee plenum of 1910. The conference devoted special attention to the forthcoming elections to the Duma in a few months and adopted a three-part resolution on this matter, which illuminates most clearly and thoroughly our complicated electoral law, examines the question of electoral agreements with other parties, and comprehensively clarifies the position and tactics of the party during the forthcoming electoral campaign. Questions concerning the struggle against famine, workers' insurance, professional unions and strikes, and others were likewise discussed, and decisions were adopted on them.

The conference also considered the question of the "liquidators." This trend denies the existence of the illegal party, declares that party already liquidated, proclaims the restoration of the illegal party as reactionary utopia, and assures that the regeneration of the party is possible only in legal form. Nevertheless, this trend, which has broken with the illegal party, has up to the present time been unable to establish any legal party. The conference ascertained that the party has been waging a struggle against this trend for four years, that the 1908 conference and the Central Committee plenum of 1910 spoke out against the liquidators, that despite all the party's efforts this trend continues to maintain fractional separateness and conducts a struggle against the party on the pages of legal publications. The conference therefore declared that the liquidators, grouping themselves around the journals *Nasha Zarya*, *Delo Zhizni* (to which should now be added *Zhivoe Delo*), have placed themselves outside the RSDLP.

Finally, the conference elected the Central Committee and the editorial board of the Central Organ *Social-Democrat*. Furthermore, the conference specially emphasized that there exist abroad a multitude of groups which are more or less socialist, but which in any case are completely detached from the Russian proletariat and its socialist activity and are, consequently, completely irresponsible; that these groups can in no way either represent or speak in the name of the RSDLP; that the party in no way assumes responsibility or vouches for these groups; and that all relations with the RSDLP can be conducted only through the mediation of the Central Committee, whose foreign address we give here: Vladimir Ulyanov, 4 Rue Marie Rose, Paris XIV (for the Central Committee).

Written in early March 1912.

Published March 18, 1912 in Circular No. 4 of the International Socialist Bureau

First published in Russian in 1929–1930 in the 2nd–3rd editions of V. I. Lenin's Collected Works, vol. XV

Printed from the text of the circular. Translated from the German